Category Archives: Brewery

Another thing I got from the interview with James Brodie yesterday was a bit of a scoop – sure, a small and specialized scoop, but a scoop nonetheless: the list of beers Brodie’s is bringing to the Copenhagen Beer Celebration! You saw it here first, folks. Here’s the full list, with some comments:

Romanov Whisky Barrel Aged (Jameson) (around 10 ABV) – I’ve had the Rioja barrel-aged version of this Imperial Stout, and it had wonderful complexity and depth of flavour. I imagine it will be just as interesting with some Irish whisky notes.

Awesomestow IPA (ABV 7.1) – First brewed for Brodie’s own festival at their Old Coffee House pub, this is a West Coast IPA with lots of tropical fruit flavours and resiny hops.

Old Street Pale (ABV 5.3) – An American Pale Ale, apparently on the smoother side of the spectrum.

So there you have it, folks. I’m pretty excited about all of these beers and I think they present a very good cross-section of Brodie’s offerings. The only thing I’m possibly missing is an ABV 3-4 session beer, something I know Brodie’s also does well, but perhaps an extreme beer festival like CBC is not the best forum for that… Anyway, all of you going to CBC: make sure to come to the Brodie’s stall – they’re a world-class brewery and this will be a unique chance to sample their beers outside the UK!

If you follow this blog (all three of you – you know who you are!) you know that I’m a big fan of East London brewery Brodie’s – I’ve written about them here and more extensively and recently here. After my writeup of the Bunny Basher festival at brewery HQ William IV in Walthamstow, brewmaster James Brodie got in touch, and today I made the trek to E10 to have a chat with James about various beery topics, particularly what kinds of beer we can expect from Brodie’s in the near future. James and Lizzie Brodie (brewery co-founder) were very friendly and enthusiastic and the interview ended with a surprising invite – more on that later.

The London Beer Week at the Rake continues – my self imposed 30-day alcohol ban has sort of limited my opportunities to join the fun, but I was so curious about new London brewery Weird Beard Brew Co. that I decided to come down to their free sample session despite the fact that I wasn’t going to drink any of the free samples. What I did do, however, was have a chat with brewmaster Gregg Irwin (one-half of Weird Beard Brew Co. the other half being brewer/brand manager Bryan Spooner) about their beers and why they are getting noticed even before they’ve officially launched their brewery.

London Beer Blog: You don’t generally decide to start a brewery overnight. How did the idea develop?

Unless you obsessively follow London brewery news, you might have missed that from March 31, the Kernel Brewery is trading from their new premises. It’s still under a railway arch in Bermondsey, but a bit further east than the previous location (and closer to Bermondsey tube station rather than London Bridge) – and the neighbours are still the same, as they’ve moved along with Kernel, which means you can still get meat from The Butchery and cheese and cold cuts from The Ham and Cheese Company to go with your beer (other nearby traders include The Little Bread Pedlar, Coleman Coffee Roasters, and The London Honey Company).

The London brewing scene has literally exploded in the past couple of years – I have 17 breweries listed on my London Breweries page and I know I have missed a few as I have at this stage left out many brew pubs (they will be added in the future, trust me) – and it’s getting to the point when it’s difficult for even dedicated geeks to keep up.

For example, I just discovered that Camden is about to get its second brewery, Little Brew, a one-man project from brewmaster Stu Small (well, technically the brewery has already been founded, but the beers won’t be available for another month or so). Little Brew is a very small-scale operation that aims at being sustainable and anchored in the local community (one thing I like about the craft beer wave – besides the excellent beer – is that breweries are again becoming community businesses). I had a brief chat with Stu about his plans for Little Brew:

This is a London-centric blog, but sometimes (just very occasionally, of course) something interesting turns up outside London. Like today, for example, when new Cornish craft brewery Harbour Brewing has their official launch.

I met Harbour Brewing founders Eddie (Lofthouse) and Rhys (Powell) at a Mikkeller event at Cask Pub & Kitchen a couple of months ago, heard about their plans to launch a brewery, and stayed in touch. So far Cornwall hasn’t been craft brewing territory the way London or Yorkshire is – there’s Sharp’s, of course (Rhys used to be a brewer there), and St Austell’s, but not much besides. So it was fun to hear about someone wanting to put Cornwall on the craft beer map!

For a Norf Londoner like me, Tooting is pretty much terra incognita. I’ve heard people live there. Maybe dragons, too. Someone said there was a volcano.

Last weekend, I made the trip to this fabled place south of the river (Turns out Tooting is really close to Wimbledon! Go figure.) to attend the first brewery open house event at new SW17 brewhouse By the Horns Brewing Co. I was of course immediately shown up for the prejudiced Northener that I am: there were lots of people there, not a dragon or volcano in sight, and – most important – there was plenty of damn fine beer.

What better way to inaugurate this new London Beer blog than by reporting on an event at one of London’s premier beer bars featuring one of London’s most talked-about microbreweries? Camden Town Brewery has been around for just over one year (counting from the official opening in September of last year) and has quickly become successful – their beers are now available at some 60-70 pubs around the country, most of them in London (Exmouth Arms in Exmouth Market to name but one example – and remember, folks, it’s the street that’s named for the pub and not the other way around!). Alongside permanent brews Hells Lager, Pale Ale and Wheat, Camden Town also produces seasonal and limited-run beers – two of which were launched at yesterday’s event at The Craft Beer Company. They were Gentleman’s Wit, a witbier at ABV 4.3 spiced with bergamot (you know, the stuff that makes Earl Grey taste like Earl Grey) and lemon, and Bleeding Hops IPA, a darker IPA which at ABV 6.4 I guess could be classified as a Double IPA.